{Credit for photo above goes to April, who threw the sweetest mini-party to come out of a backpack ever}

Weddings have always held a dear spot in our hearts, and today we get to celebrate all of the generous spirit, creativity, and yes, hard work that goes into them. Weddings by Smudge Ink is a result of the many couples who have invited us into their lives,  shared their funny how-we-met stories,  and allowed us to be a part of telling their biggest story yet. We’re still in a daze from the long days of designing, typesetting, re-designing, ordering, printing, trimming, writing, editing, overthinking, uploading, emailing, Skype-ing, clicking, waiting, more clicking, nervous tapping, and many, many coffee runs. But we hope you’ll come visit us here often where we’ll share more of our wedding inspirations, tips, crushes, and everything that makes us laugh and love what we do!

Love is too weak a word for what I feel—I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F’s, yes I have to invent, of course I—I do, don’t you think I do?

- Alvy Singer to Annie Hall

Given that we are a working studio, we thought it would be fun to share with you the process of how we make our greeting cards. Our fondness for letterpress printing is part of why we started this business, so it’s only appropriate that we share some letterpress love.

Once we’ve determined a card must be printed, there are a series of steps we go through to produce it, not to mention package and send it off to our retailers. In this first post, we’ll show you how we set up the press in preparation for printing and how we run the first color.

After we’ve determined how many cards to print of a specific design, we cut the parent sheets (large format paper) to smaller run size sheets (smaller format paper fit to run through the press but not the final size). Next, we use a measuring guide to determine where the first color should land on the run sheet.

We then take the polymer plate for the first color and adhere it to the base. Now it’s time to add the ink — we’re using warm grey for this particular card. The ink is applied through the ink fountain at the back of the press, a heidelberg windmill that we affectionately call Heidi. Once the ink is ready to go, the base is locked into the chase and set into the press. The pins that guide the paper during the run must be adjusted so they don’t get crushed by the base. Be sure to say hello to Christopher, Emily’s feline friend.

Now it’s time to take the first pull to see if the image is landing where we want it to. We do this several times and make many small adjustments so the card is printing perfectly in regard to color, impression and registration. Once it’s good to go, we prepare the stack of paper for the run. Adding air to the stack makes it easier for the press to suction the paper into the press.

We begin the run and monitor it carefully to make sure the color, impression and registration remain consistent. After the run is over, the stack is set side until it’s time to print the second color.

In the next post, we’ll cover the second color, trimming and scoring. Stay tuned!…and thanks for reading.

As you might have read a few posts ago, we’re gearing up to launch a brand new line of wedding invitations: Weddings by Smudge Ink. In just a few weeks we’ll be showing off our 26 new wedding suite designs all of which are designed and letterpress-printed right here in our Charlestown studio. Below is a sneak peek at some of the pieces. More to come in about 2 weeks.  Stay tuned!

The Gift Show is coming to a close today, so we finally have some time to pull together our photos and share a bit of the set-up process with you. Setting up for trade shows takes a lot of time and effort and this show was no exception. We start planning roughly 2 months in advance for our display, but admittedly much of the heavy lifting doesn’t happen until 1-2 weeks before the show begins. Below are some early stage set-up pics followed by close-ups of the sticky stars and the booth overall. Thanks a ton to Bruce at Creative Displays who stores our booth and delivered our walls, and to the Smudge Ink team whose combined efforts helped us to have a successful show.

We were pleased with how the sticky stars turned out especially because they added an interesting (and much needed) 3-D element to the booth. In terms of actual product, customers seemed particularly excited about our wrap display. Note to self: it’s good to mix up how you display your products!

The note writing desk was probably the most exciting feature of this booth. We set-up a desk where visitors could sit down, write a note, decorate/address the envelope, and post it.  Everyone here at Smudge Ink makes the time – amidst the craziness of our lives – to write notes, so this note writing station seemed like a natural extension of what we are about and why we are in business. For all those who took the time to sit down and write, thank you!, your letters have been sent. And for those of you who didn’t, we will continue to offer this service in shows to come.

Pictures of the booth all set-up…

As with any trade show we exhibit at, there are always lessons learned. Inevitably there are things that don’t work so well and things that do. We continually try to improve upon our display each year. So, alas, we make a list and tend to such issues between now and the National Stationery Show this May. Hope to see you there!